Many people enjoy sport video games for simulating various ball sports in home video game machines and arcade video game machines. Sport video games for simulating soccer and futsal which is like a small-scaled soccer, become popular. A variety of arcade video game machines, home video game machines, and home video game software, for enjoying the soccer or futsal video games, are widespread to markets. In accordance with the improvement in performance of video game machines, realities of expressions and motions of a player character displayed on a screen are exceedingly improved.
Further, in recent years, two similar video game machines are connected via a communication line (a cable line or a radio line) and a plurality of gamers are separated into two teams. For example, the gamers who play the video game on one video game machine belong to one team, the gamers who play the video game on the other video game machine belong to the other team, and the two teams can meet in a video game. Differently from video game machines in which plays a match against only a CPU, in the above-mentioned video game machines, a plurality of gamers are separated into two teams and the gamers in one team play a match against the gamers in the other team. Consequently, in the above-mentioned latter video game machines, the gamers can enjoy the video game in a manner different from that of the former video game machines.
The video game of the ball sport for playing a match between two teams, such as futsal or soccer is most excited because, primarily, when a player character in one team steals a ball from a player character in the other team, organized play can be enjoyed, for example, pass of the ball is successful or shoot of the passed ball is successful. However, the ball sport has a trend in that the player characters in the one team gather around the player character in the other team, which keeps the ball. Therefore, if the player character in the other team, which keeps the ball, tries to pass the ball to the player character in the same team, the pass of the ball is hardly successful and organized offense is difficult in some cases. In particular, in the case of a beginner, in the one team, who is strange to the operation of the video game machine, if he tries to pass the ball, the ball is promptly stolen by the player character in the other team and the ball moves back and forth between the two teams. Thus, the original enjoyment of the ball sport cannot be enjoyed in many cases.
When the gamer fails to operate the ball and the player character fails to catch the passed ball, the player character goes for the ball in a field by the gamer operation. In this case, when the gamer is strange to the operation of the player character, it takes unnecessary time to go for the ball. For this case, the player cannot enjoy the game though during the game, and this time substantially corresponds to a loss time of the game. Also, when the ball which is not successfully passed by the player character is out of the field, time for restarting the game through a set play such as kick-in or throw-in substantially corresponds to a loss time of the game.
The above time becomes unnecessary time in the case of a game which is played for limited time. Preferably, a ratio of the loss time is reduced in the overall play time of the game.
The present invention is devised based on the above-described background of the art. In other words, it is a first object of the present invention to provide a sport video game machine for simulating a ball sport, in which a gamer can easily execute an organized play and the unnecessary time during the game is reduced as much as possible so that the game can be further enjoyed.
Moreover, the futsal and soccer include plays such as sliding tackle by which a player in one team forcedly steals a ball from a player, in the other team, which keeps the ball. If this play is successful, there is a chance to change the game situation after the time point. To make the play successful, a high-level technique is required to execute the play at the best timing while the guard of the other team is attacked by the one team. Thus, it is difficult that the above play is virtually realized on the video game machine and the gamer can enjoy the feeling (reality) similar to the play in an actual play.
The present invention is devised based on the above-described background of the art. In other words, it is a second object of the present invention to enable a gamer to sufficiently enjoy the reality when a player character in one team forcedly steals a ball from a player character in the other team, which keeps the ball, in the case of the sliding tackle in futsal and so on.